Ethnic Koreans in China swap burdensome North for profitable South

BEIJING, July 4 | By Ju-min Park

BEIJING, July 4 (Reuters) - When a delegation of North
Korean officials visited the head of the Korean business
association in China last year asking him to drum up investment
in their impoverished country, Jin Rong-guo turned them away.

The 200-strong ethnic Korean business group has its eyes on
a more inviting prize - South Korea.

"North Korea has lost credibility for investment. Korean
Chinese businessmen always question if they can recoup their
money," said Jin, 51, whose office is in Beijing's Korea Town,
where South Korean franchise cafes and restaurants line the
streets.

Some two million ethnic Koreans live in China.

Many migrated to avoid Japanese imperial rule of the Korean
peninsula from 1910-1945.

Others have crossed from North Korea in recent decades,
seeking a better life as China's economy boomed while the
North's stagnated and the country became more isolated because
of its banned nuclear programme.

North Korea had long been the main foreign investment and
trade option for ethnic Koreans in China. But when China and
South Korea established diplomatic ties in 1992, that gave them
an alternative.

Annual trade between North Korea and China is $6 billion. By
contrast, South Korean and Chinese trade was worth $215 billion
last year, according to South Korean data.

"For the Joseonjok (ethnic Koreans in China), the North is a
burden," said Lee Jang-sub, an expert on the Korean diaspora at
South Korea's Chonnam National University.

NEW TIES SPAN BUSINESS, CULTURE AND STUDY

Jin's story shows how things have changed.

He worked for five years at an ethnic Korean-run company
that sent Chinese corn, animal feed and sewing machines to North
Korea in exchange for nylon up until 1990. When the Chinese
government started demanding payment in hard currency, many of
those companies, including Jin's, went bankrupt.

Jin now does advertising for South Korean companies in China
and organises cultural events for performers from Seoul.

On top of that, he has two sons studying at South Korean
universities.

"Conglomerates like Samsung and LG treat us well. One of my
friends recently got moved to a senior managing level at one of
those companies," said Jin, referring to two of the biggest
corporate names in South Korea, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd
and LG Electronics.

Ethnic Koreans are also investing in the South.

While there is no data, ethnic Korean entrepreneurs are
involved in a $300 million property project in Jeju, a tropical
island popular with Chinese tourists. Ethnic Koreans also do
business in fashion, food and household items with their
counterparts in the South.

Some 50 percent of all Chinese small businesses in South
Korea are run by ethnic Koreans, the Korea Trade and Investment
Promotion Agency said.

Meanwhile, South Korean companies have poured more than $40
billion into China.

Those growing ties were on display last week during a visit
to China by South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who brought
along a big delegation including executives from Samsung and
Hyundai Motor Co.

When the North Korean officials came to his office, Jin
didn't tell them his association members were not interested.
Instead he pointed them to a Chinese partner who might have been
willing to invest in a wig-making venture.

In the 1990s, ethnic Korean businessmen often met with North
Korean officials. Now, they rarely bother.

Jin cited a number of reasons why his colleagues found it
hard to do business with the North. These included having to do
deals in cash and the country's unpredictable politics.

"In big cities, we tell each other to avoid doing too much
business (with the North)," said Jin, whose father was born in
what is now South Korea and migrated to China to avoid
forced labour by Japanese colonialists.

NORTH RELIES ON CHINESE COMPANIES FOR TRADE

It was once common for members of Jin's association to
broker sales of North Korean jeans or oriental medicines to the
South. But when Seoul severed most economic ties in 2008 after a
North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean at a tourist
resort in the North, that trade largely dried up.

The North also shut a factory park it ran with the South in
April at the height of recent tensions on the peninsula.

Those moves, combined with the wariness of the Korean
diaspora, has left the North almost totally dependent on Chinese
firms for trade, who typically buy the country's gold, coal and
mineral resources, and on small Chinese traders along the 1,400
km (875 mile) land border.

That has sparked some concern in South Korea and among
ethnic Koreans in China that the North is becoming so dependent
on China that if North-South relations ever improved, Chinese
firms would have the market sown up.

It's not just business ties that have suffered between
ethnic Koreans and North Korea. Few of them want to live or work
in North Korea either.

In South Korea, however, more than 350,000 ethnic Koreans
from China are there as guest workers, according to South
Korea's statistics office. They are employed as babysitters,
cooks and construction workers and account for nearly half the
entire foreign workforce in South Korea.

Despite the collapse of economic incentives to deal with the
North, emotional ties remain strong, especially for the older
generation.

"If a neighbour has a relative from North Korea visiting, we
give them pollack (a Korean staple fish) ... or a bicycle or
bedding," said Ryu Pil-lan, a 55-year-old Korean woman who moved
to Beijing in the late 1980s from Yanbian, an ethnic Korean
region near China's border with the North.
(Editing by David Chance and Dean Yates)